


forfeit

by tanyart



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: During sex!, Enemies to Temporary Truce, In the face of things going to hell!, Introspection, M/M, Romanticism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:27:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24901564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanyart/pseuds/tanyart
Summary: Shin knows where he stands, and that it won't be anywhere close to Drifter.(Written before Season of Arrivals.)
Relationships: The Drifter/Shin Malphur
Comments: 11
Kudos: 100





	forfeit

**Author's Note:**

> Who knows what's happening with the timeline. I sure don't! I started writing this at the trailer drop, haha.

Drifter spends the night on Shin’s ship. It’s one of the most suspicious things he’s done in a while, so Shin knows he’s up to something. He lets Drifter up anyway, and it feels like instant retribution when Drifter transmats in and puts his hands at Shin’s cheek, his waist, mouth at his ear. It raises more alarm bells than the hot blood in Shin’s veins.

Drifter reels Shin in by the collar, beckoning him out from the cockpit. The pull has the same deliberation of a gambler drawing up another card from a deck. It’s calculated, but the desperate edge to Drifter’s grin makes Shin’s feet move on their own. Drifter plays like he's been dealt a losing hand, and he cannot afford to fold.

When Drifter gets like this, sly and wolfish and borderline manic, Shin thinks he ought to steel himself for whatever’s coming. And there are plenty of things coming their way, these days.

There’s no fight. Not this time. Just Drifter pushing into Shin into his messy bed, and Shin goes down easy by choice. He’s clear-eyed as he’ll ever be, but the icy hands cupping his face makes Shin feel feverish. Drifter runs so much colder than him; it reminds Shin of unreachable stars and the endless void beneath them. His hands feel good, chasing away the festering burn in him, but that’s also another frustration. Shin catches Drifter by the wrist, jerking him down to crash their lips together, wanting to put fire into that hungry, hollow emptiness.

Drifter meets him with something slower, more dishonest than any biting kiss. Shin hears his own pulse in his ears as Drifter douses him with measured kisses, making him bend to the curve of his body and react to every cool drag of Drifter’s palm over his skin. There’s a damning warmth bleeding out from Shin’s chest, but he manages the thought through his gasps; _what’re you trying to keep from me this time?_

Drifter won’t tell him. Shin doesn’t think he even bothered to ask the question out loud.

Shin’s ship isn’t built for two, much like how the Derelict isn’t built for anyone but Drifter. (And even then, Drifter seems like an outsider in his own frozen, dilapidated ark.) But he invades Shin’s ship with his presence, crowding and pushing, and when he boxes Shin in with both arms braced, Drifter becomes so much more than a body seeking the old thrill of a bad distraction.

Shin’s sparse ship condenses into nothing, and he forgets the cramped bed and the low ceiling. The enclosed walls. The lights flickering overhead. He’s in Drifter’s bubble now. Ain’t nothing as grandiose or powerful like a Throne room or the Ascendant plane, but Shin shivers like he’s been pulled into one.

It’s one of the few times Shin knows himself to be smaller than what Yor and the world had made him out to be. For all he’s done to run from it, fate has divined bigger plans for Drifter. Everything from cosmic forces to Queens and Strangers from unknown timelines. Shin’s existence has only ever revolved around Palamon, Dwindler’s Ridge, and a circling ship made of bones. Drifter’s stretches beyond universes, tied to more than anyone knows.

All the legends and secrets of the Renegade Hunter can’t compare.

When Drifter puts his hand at Shin’s chest, Shin feels the weight of centuries of machinations behind it. There’s some kind of power behind Drifter’s hand, buzzing with Light and Darkness and another Shin doesn’t recognize. The Nine. Fate. Destiny, maybe. Drifter probably doesn’t realize it. In fact, with the way Drifter smirks and starts undoing the clasps of Shin’s armor, Shin is sure Drifter doesn’t know just how much sway he has in everything.

Shin’s long stopped believing in things like _Chosen Ones_ , but he’s always had a weakness for romanticism. It puts him in a complicated spot. He looks at Drifter and thinks — _harbinger_.

And this harbinger is doing his damndest to get Shin begging. Drifter strips the rest of Shin’s focus away as quick as his clothes. His barking laugh is loud when Shin goes lax underneath him, teeth cold at Shin’s throat. It feels like ice, melting against Shin’s skin.

For the moment and the next, Shin stops burning.

Afterwards, Drifter sits up to settle himself over Shin’s wet thighs, leans on one arm to look him over. He looks comfortable. Shin wants to soak up every detail of this; Drifter on his ship like he wants to be there — the crooked smile, dark eyes, the heavy weight of his attention and satisfaction like void-induced gravity.

With a look like that, Shin wonders if Drifter might be finally seeing him as a person instead of the incarnation of angry vengeance. Shin sees Drifter as he is — less of a thread and more of a knot trying to unravel itself from the web of fate, tangled in so many lines Shin can’t fathom an existence where Drifter doesn’t touch it in some way.

Drifter reaches over. Thumbs Shin’s bottom lip and then sweeps it over one cheekbone. The gesture is soft, and Shin is tired enough to close his eyes. He can ignore the tremor in Drifter’s hand, but he can’t ignore how he sees the lines of [Nothing Ends] written across Drifter’s silhouette, the faint backdrop of [Hope] in his gaze, barely there.

He hears Drifter exhale, and Shin opens his eyes in time to have Drifter lean in for another achingly slow kiss that has a fighting chance of being ruinous.

Shin doesn’t buy it. A quiet laugh escapes him, startled by a sudden realization. He’d thought Drifter would run again.

He says, as darkness closes in, “You think you’re so clever.”

* * *

The Annex is empty. There’s a rattling machine that spews out recorded lines whenever Shin walks by it. When he transmats on to the Derelict, the little floater ship Drifter’s tried to keep secret is missing.

Shin leans back on the railing, staring at the empty space. He rakes a hand through his hair, the chill biting as always. He listens to a silent comm that’ll probably keep silent for a very long time.

Might be he’s a tad rueful. But he isn’t much surprised.

Shin keeps the channel on long enough to say, “Safe travels.”

Then he kills the line.


End file.
